The Game
by Krisa612
Summary: A look at what Palpatine might have been like as a child and some of the events that might have made him that way.


**A/N:** This is the result of a challenge from Fate at ALW: to write something about what Palpatine might have been like as a youth.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own or pretend to own or aspire to own any of the SW franchise. I don't expect or plan or want to profit in any way from this other than to practice writing.

**The Game**

He didn't fit. Of course, he never really had, but it seemed that the more he advanced and the more power he gathered into his willing hands, the more he clashed with his environment. It wasn't visibly obvious, this clashing. It was more subtle than that. In fact, most beings, mired as they were in inconsequential banalities of physical everyday life, didn't notice it. The slightly more astute might feel a niggling sensation of not-quite-right that they would dismiss almost immediately. After all, the banalities were far more comfortable for most. And yet, it was there and he could feel it: a bone-jarringly intense sensation of dissonance between himself and the rest of the universe.

Especially now, as he raised his hands to the sky and accepted the applause from all of the beings in the senate. There were still some dissenters, presumably those few that belonged to the "slightly more astute" category and were now shifting uncomfortably in their senatorial float-pods, trying to pinpoint the origin of their unease. They wouldn't be able to do so, though- they were simply far too inferior to him to even begin to comprehend what was going on. They were all so infinitely inferior to him that he was like a whole other class of being altogether.

Any other man in his place would have been living in the moment, thrilled to have come this far, to have attained such a level of supremacy. He, on the other hand, even as he basked in the roar of approval coming from the crowd, was already moving ahead in his mind, had already swallowed this victory whole, and was eager to forge on and conquer something even larger. Anyone else would have thought that complete control of the government was the most anyone could hope for in terms of power, but he knew better. He had been momentarily satisfied, that was true. But only momentarily. This small (in his eyes) victory had taken the edge off of his hunger, decreased the urgency slightly, but had also whetted his appetite. He would not settle for something as small as control of the government. He wanted control of the universe. And that was why he didn't fit, and, as far as he recalled, never had.

The image of a small boy flashed across his mind. _A small boy dressed in vivid blue robes, contrary to the peaceful green of his classmates' tunics. They all wore the same color- apparently it symbolized togetherness and equality and teamwork and supporting nature. He wore blue, because it made him special. Seated alone at a large table in the center of the classroom, he was bent over his work, his brow furrowed in concentration. The teacher was starting to walk around the classroom to admire everyone's drawings, so he worked faster, ignoring a lock of pale brown hair that fell across his forehead. A line of small green figures frolicked across his paper, holding hands, with one blue figure at the end of the line. The instructor bent over his shoulder to look at his paper just as he added a blue border around the edge of the paper. Too much green, he reflected. _

"_Why, this is beautiful, dear," the instructor said, picking up the boy's piece of flimsiplast and holding it up so that the rest of the class could observe it._

"_See how he has drawn a frame? Does anyone know what the word 'frame' means?" Another child, a petite girl sitting at one of the other tables, responded, explaining that her mother had said that frames were meant to draw attention to a part of the picture that was special. The boy glowed. That was right: special. He was special, because the teacher was holding up his picture and because the frame said so. _

_The instructor knelt down next to him so that wisps of her long hair brushed against his tunic and placed the drawing back on the table, asking, "Would you like to tell me about it?" No, he didn't especialy, but you were supposed to tell the teacher about your drawings, so he would anyway. Stupid question, really. _

"_Is this our class?" the teacher asked, plowing on in ignorance of the thought process going on in her student's young mind, "And is this you?" She pointed to the blue child. He nodded his approval. She wasn't completely dumb, he supposed, although her questions really were stupid. She pointed at another green child, who appeared to be sitting near one edge of the flimsi, apart from the others. _

"_And are you helping this one up so that he can play, too?" she asked brightly. _

"_No," the boy said disdainfully, "he's not good at the game. He's not allowed to play." _

He had understood, even at that young age. Those who were not good at the game were not allowed to play. Even now, he could see Senator Amidala, his little queen, furrowing her brow at him from across the chamber. She was too nice, he thought idly. That was her problem. Bright mind, but too nice to use it. She had tried to play, but she wasn't good at the game, and she was going to lose. She and that pregnancy that she was foolishly trying so hard to hide. Luckily, her illicit husband wasn't afraid to use his mind. Even more luckily, he was too passionate about it, and so he would eventually lose, too… but only after he had served his purpose. And every loss by someone else was a victory, however small, for him. He had learned that lesson at a young age, too. Perhaps he had been nine standard years old, just preparing to move onto the next level of his formal education.

_Standing in a bright corner of what his mother jokingly called their grand entry hall (really it was just a small room with a door and a window to the outside that bridged the gap between the outdoors and the shadowy inner hallway that led to the rest of their modest but comfortable home, and allowed them a place to leave their sullied outerclothes during the rainy seasons) he had been attempting to figure out where the door monitor's blind spot was, in case he should ever have need of the information, either for his own use or to barter with. His younger brother and sister, twins, heedless of the research taking place, burst through the door with unmistakably guilty looks on their faces just as the recorder was about to pick up on his presence and swivel towards him, and a burst of anger rose in the boy's mind, momentarily staining his vision with a reddish veil of haze. He recovered quickly, storing his anger in the back of his mind while he examined his siblings' faces more closely. _

"_What're you doing?" he asked in a whisper, immediately recognizing the look in their eyes as a desire to share their secret with someone. Their faces lit up and his little brother began unfurling his cloak, which, the boy noticed several seconds later than he would have liked, had been stored under his brother's little arm, still plump with childish baby fat. _

"_Look at what we found in Papa's field," his little sister whispered conspiratorially, extracting something small, gray, and soft-looking from her twin's cloak. "A perfen. Isn't it nice? It's very friendly." She held it out for the boy to touch and see for himself. The boy stroked the perfen's fur gently, gaining its and his siblings' trust while studying the situation. If he kept the secret, the twins would feel beholden to him and he would be able to extract favors from them in the future…but, at five standard years of age, they weren't particularly useful for anything and he couldn't, upon first appraisal, think of anything he might want from them. On the other hand, if he told his mother, he would gain a little more in her esteem, which was always valuable, not to mention pleasant, and she might feel beholden to him, which was much more useful. On top of which, he could hear her coming down the hallway. _

"_Mama," he called, watching the shock in the twins' eyes and enjoying it, "Pyerr and Clér have brought something bad into the house." _

"_Oh, Pyerr, Clér, what is it this time?" she asked, hurrying into the room. She scooped up the cloak and the perfen almost immediately and looked over at the boy. _

"_Thank you for telling me, darling, that was very mature of you. Pyerr, Clér, you must take this back out into the field and set it free. Then you must go tell Papa what you have done," she said, handing the offending perfen back to her daughter and giving both of her younger children a disappointed and stern look. Then she turned back to her older son with a smile on her face. "Would you like to come into town with me this afternoon, my little prince? Perhaps we can choose some material for your new tunics. You want to be the best dressed boy in your class, after all, do you not?" _

_The boy nodded contentedly and took his mother's hand. She knew how to play the game; she was a good ally to have. _

You couldn't depend too much on your allies, though, he knew. They always left you, at one point or another. Sometimes they left you purposely: they betrayed you, and then they had to be found and dealt with. Betrayal was intolerable. At other times, they left you accidentally, perhaps just a little earlier than planned, but even that was inconvenient at best. He still remembered the day his mother had left him.

_The screams echoed through the house, rolling down from the upper level and washing through the main rooms on the ground level in waves, drenching the whole household in his mother's pain. As he ran through the dingy hallway, just ahead of the next chasing wave that threatened to overtake him, he realized that sometimes women just forgot how to play the game. Even the smartest women, like his mother, who he thought had understood it best of anyone else he knew, had forgotten it too easily for comfort when her middle had started to swell with another little brother or sister. He remembered, as he burst through the door and out into the innocently bright sunshine, the twinge of betrayal he had felt when he had learned what was happening during the first day of his twelfth year. Why did his mother need another child? She had him, after all; inflicting the twins on him had been both useless and highly annoying from his point of view. They didn't have that much money to begin with; what they needed to be doing was saving it and concentrating it all on moving into Theed, out of this country hovel and into a grander house in one of the more prestigious neighborhoods so that he could advance his career and pull their family up to a new social level. _

_He understood this at twelve standard years, but his mother, with her swollen belly, her laugh like finely wrought bells, and her eyes uncharacteristically devoid of scheming and cunning, had forgotten it. She, like so many other women, had forgotten how to play the game, and he was powerless to remind her. He cursed her, cursed her weakness and her betrayal, because he knew, instinctively, the same way he knew the rules of the game, that she was leaving him. And it wasn't according to his plan. _

_Some uncomfortable, weak, wet sort of emotion welled up inside of him and surprised him by threatening his vision with tears. And now she was making his own mind and body betray him. He couldn't identify exactly what he was feeling but he knew that he disapproved of it anyway. Emotions like this one were not at all valid parts of the game, but he found himself powerless to stop it: powerless to stop himself from feeling it, and powerless to stop the cause, to stop his mother from leaving him. He did not like lacking power, and he vowed never again to be without it as he walked slowly back to the house, to the front door where his father was standing with the twins, holding a small bundle in his arms and waiting to inform him of what he already knew. He had lost his only ally inadvertently, something he would make sure did not happen again. _

Now he knew well enough to dispose of his allies before he could become too dependent on them. In fact, he reflected, glancing down at his aide, his group of allies was due for …cleansing. His aide was looking around the chamber with satisfaction, which simply could not be allowed. He clearly thought that he had had something to do with the orchestration of this small victory that he probably saw as a huge one, the final step to a long campaign. What he did not know was that this was nowhere near being the final step and the campaign had been one far longer than he could imagine…and that his part in it was just about finished. Another clearly inferior being. But many had been disposed of before him…and he would not be the last, either.

"_Are you ready?" the boy asked his debate partner and loyal follower as they strode down the Political Academy corridors in a billow of brilliant blue robes. The girl was shorter than him, and, for all her attractiveness, not especially graceful, and so she had to jog a little every few steps in order to keep up with him. She nodded, swallowing somewhat convulsively. He smiled. Good. That meant she was nervous, which meant she remembered how important this was. He needed to be number one in his debate class to get a good placement for the summer, and therefore could not afford a mediocre debate partner. _

"_Because if you're not ready, I can do the second rebuttal. Don't worry about it- I really wouldn't mind," he assured her, injecting a kindly, sympathetic tone into his voice. _

"_No, no, I really am ready. You have enough to worry about between the opening and the closing and any rebuttals after the second one. I really can handle the first two rebuttals," she said in what she probably meant to be a confident tone. He could hear the slight quiver in her voice, though, and frowned. She had better not make a mess of it, he thought as they took their seats near the front of the classroom and the instructor rose to address the class. The boy followed her interestedly with his gaze as she led a tall, handsome stranger to the front of the class with her. _

"_This is Lord Plagueis," she announced without preamble. "He will be observing our class from the rear of the room today. He has asked us to proceed as if he were not here, so, first two groups, come and set up for your presentation." _

_Interesting. An observer in debate class. He knew it was important, the way he knew most important things, and so he watched his partner carefully as she began setting up the holoprojector for their portions of the debate. He glanced up toward the back of the room almost involuntarily and met Lord Plagueis' eyes for the briefest of moments. In that moment, something he understood at the most base and instinctive of levels was communicated between them and he turned to his partner, careful not to let the maliciousness he felt show in his face. Now was the time to voluntarily dispose of an ally for the first time. He was fifteen standard years old. _

_He turned to the class and began his well-rehearsed opening statement. His excitement mounted every time he flicked his gaze back to Lord Plagueis and found the mysterious man's eyes trained relentlessly on him, a mask of vague interest cloaking his face, his eyes, and even his very mind from the boy. He barely noticed as the opposing team presented their first argument, and the decision to stand up and present the first rebuttal came to him as naturally as falling asleep every night. The look of shocked betrayal on his partner's face fueled his energy with a satisfying sense of victory and he found, suddenly, that the holoprojector was anticipating his manual commands and following his thoughts as soon as they entered his mind. He continued on through the second and third rebuttals, after which the opposing team stood down without even bothering with their closing remarks, and he finished his to the sound of stunned applause, his gaze locked with that of the man at the back of the room. _

"_Young Palpatine, I believe?" the man greeted him after class. The boy nodded. _

"_I am Lord Plagueis," the man added unnecessarily. _

"_I know," responded the boy, meeting his eyes boldly. _

"_That was quite a performance you gave today," the man continued, "I foresee that you will go far with your skills- _all_ of your skills." He looked meaningfully into the boy's eyes at this before continuing. "I can help you get there faster, and take you beyond, too. I can teach you things that you will learn nowhere else. I think that you merit more than you can attain here, on your own. You think so, too; am I right?" _

_The boy nodded wordlessly, still meeting the stranger's gaze unflinchingly. _

"_You are different from all these people, these beings. You can go further than them, in many ways. I can help you make your place in the galaxy, a place of your own. Would you like that?" _

_The boy nodded again, and they fell into step. _

But so many years later, he realized, he did not need to make room for himself in the galaxy. It did not matter that he didn't fit in this galaxy, in this life. It didn't matter that he never had and probably never would. He did not need create a place for himself anywhere now, because he would soon be able to call the entire galaxy his own.


End file.
